Nothing Civil in a Civil Suit

Got served with papers on Saturday. I was cleaning gutters and turning compost, an apt activity for such an occasion. I was about as dirty as I've been in a long time and was up to my elbows in wet, decomposing leaf litter when I heard a car in the driveway. I thought it was the postman with a package too big for the box. Instead, it was an obese gentleman with a FedEx envelope that he had opened. Strange, I thought.

He had been hired to serve the papers to me. He does this for a living. I think lawyers pay him and that he has some sort of official status that can't be ignored. So when I said I didn't want them, he explained the federal and state laws that gave me no choice in the matter. He liked Hoover, told me about his dead dog and dead cat and how they were going to co-mingle their ashes and save them so that their own children could add their ashes at the appropriate time and throw the blend off the dock of their house in Florida. How is one supposed to respond to such a story?

A man finds happiness remembering his animals. Another man is angry and seeks revenge. A third is deeply involved with compost and leaf litter. I like to think that I'm easily contented, but I need to find a way to detect underlying anger before I become mired in more legal mudslinging. On the other hand, we are all angry at times. It's a necessary personality component. But there are those people whose lives seem to be ruled by their anger and others for whom anger is a temporary state rather than the foundation of their being. I don't think there are any angry babies, so this must be something one acquires with age.

Music Review: Richard Goode in Newtown, CT

Seen and Heard (MusicWeb International)

Richard Goode, Piano
Newtown Friends of Music
Edmond Town Hall, Newtown, Connecticut
September 16, 2007

J S Bach

Prelude and Fugue in G minor, BWV 885 (Book II)
Four Sinfonias

E major, BWV 792

E minor, BWV 793

G minor, BWV 797

E-flat major, BWV 791
Prelude and Fugue in B major, BWV 892 (Book II)

Haydn, Sonata in D major, Hoboken XVI:24


Beethoven, Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2

‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’


Debussy, Three Preludes

La cathédrale engloutie (Book I)

Ondine (Book II)

General Lavine - Eccentric (Book II)


Chopin
Impromptu in F-sharp major, Op. 36

Three Mazurkas

G major, Op. 50 No. 1

C major, Op. 24, No. 2

C-sharp minor, Op. 50, No. 3

Nocturne in B major, Opus 62, No. 1

Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Opus 44

So many pianists try to be flamboyant in their playing or exaggerated in their interpretations often to the point of affectation. Thus it is a particular pleasure to listen Richard Goode’s playing, which is all about the music—capturing the mood, transmitting a feeling without extraneous fanfare—it seems so reserved, but in a good way. I suspect it’s harder to be interestingly thoughtful and subtle than to come out with all barrels blazing. And what a treat to hear Richard Goode in the rather intimate setting of Newtown Connecticut’s Town Hall.

I never tire of hearing Goode’s intelligent rendering of Beethoven sonatas, this time, the so-called Moonlight. There’s nothing melodramatic or sappy about Goode’s articulation, and instead of the usual Chopin-like romanticism one hears in the first movement so often, Goode emphasized the dark melody in the base and the brooding quality of C-sharp minor was more redolent of a moldering grave than anything light or frilly. It was remarkably and rivetingly effective.

Goode began his recital with a selection of Bach put together like a baroque suite. The clarity of his articulation and the beautiful subtlety in his phrasing seemed so natural and unforced that it was easy to forget one's reviewing duties and simply enjoy the music. How utterly pleasant.

Similarly, Goode’s Haydn was immaculate, and moving from baroque to classical brought a fierceness and urgency to the playing that ripped along at a great rate of many notes per second—delightful.

The Beethoven followed, and you could feel the expressive range growing with the chronology. Lots of sforsandos, great dynamic range. And then after intermission, a leap across all of romanticism directly to three Debussy preludes. I wondered how Goode’s clean lines and elegant phrasing would match up with the slowly emerging images Debussy painted in the preludes. I needn’t have worried. Clarity and precision, Goode’s hallmarks, combined with his intellectual understanding of the works, created what felt like newly cleaned artwork glowing in freshly polished frames.

Then back to romanticism for a bookend collection of Chopin movements to balance the synthesized Bach suite at the opening. It was a long concert and, surprisingly, the Chopin felt murky by comparison to the rest of the performances. I’ve heard Goode play Chopin with the ferocity of a middle Beethoven sonata, and it works beautifully, but this was more of a relaxed finish to the afternoon.

Goode is a transporting performer, an intellectual with plenty of technique to communicate his thoughts about the music. Nothing is ill-considered or dashed off without careful consideration. It’s as though he has considered just how every note in the piece should be played. He is intense without being showy, correct without being stuffy, original without outlandishness. Goode allows us to hear new things and it’s a treat. He sets a standard of excellence that few can match.

CA

Fired, Again!

I was fired from my job as an account manager one week ago today. It was remarkably like being fired three-and-a-half years ago from my job as an acquisitions editor. This time, though, I felt like an old pro at being fired, which probably isn't something I should be proud of. There are some striking similarities in the two situations.

In both cases, I had grown to hate my job to the point of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. It depressed me to work for people who seemed to take such pleasure in criticizing my work. I continued to do my job, not even perfunctorily, but well, but it was no use. I became withdrawn, uncommunicative, and argumentative even as I was trying my best (admittedly not great) to do as I was told. Once again, I find that I do not have the constitution of a good little girl.

In addition to being fired twice, I have been laid off and once I got offered a severance to leave when my boss went unnecessarily ballistic and cursed at me. But I've also had managers who I liked and who liked me. Interestingly, a couple of them have gotten fired along the way, as well

Is there a lesson to be gained from my experiences? Probably not, but I do think that a certain worldly caution is inevitable after such earth-stopping events. Or perhaps the lesson is simply that I'm slow to learn my lessons. No wonder I spent so much time in the "Thinking Chair" in second grade.

Tomato Confit

I’ve been making batches of Tomato Confit. Timo found the recipe in the Zuni Café cookbook, exclaimed with satisfied glee, and passed it along. I’ve picked a lot of plum tomatoes at Waldingfield, washed, sliced, salted, added garlic and basil, covered all with too much olive oil, and roasted half-a-dozen batches at 300° for two hours or so. Almost every night we have a fresh batch to eat with bread and salad, and I’ve been piling up the left overs in a covered glass dish, which was almost full.

There’s enough oil in each batch that it’s easy to leave most of it in the baking dish and just layer in the next batch of tomatoes, garlic, and herbs. The oil becomes remarkably flavorful, almost rich with the concentrated flavors baked into it. The tomatoes themselves are baked long enough to remove almost all the water from them, and the effect is essentially sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil. 

Which brings up the question of what percentage of tomatoes sold as sun-dried are sun-dried? I suspect it’s very low. But oven-dried tomato isn’t a particularly appealing name. It brings up images of limp stewed tomatoes. So confit, which I’ve only known as various forms of meat packed in their own fat, seems like an apt name for the result of the long, slow roasting.

Today, I reheated the accumulated confit in the oven and canned it all in pint-size jars. It looks quite beautiful and the jars sealed nicely. I think that we have at last found a way to store tomatoes for use through the winter. I want to make much more, and I have another batch in the oven right now.

Book Review: "The Tipping Point," by Malcolm Gladwell

I read about 100 pages of The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, a best-seller from 2000 and an inspiration for Make it Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, a current best-selling business book published last year. The connection is only significant because all my colleagues have read Make it Stick, and the book has become something of a bible at work (or more like a false god, perhaps). I’m not happy about this, but first, The Tipping Point.

The point of tipping points, a term not coined by Gladwell, is that there is an observed phenomenon that crosses disciplines such as epedemiology, population growth, advertising/marketing/fashion, and, by association, business. So while it’s important to figure out how the 1918 flu epidemic tipped from garden-variety influenza to the fierce killer of the 20th century, we’re also supposed to believe that the great Hush Puppy phenomenon of the late 90’s, when fashionably counterculture lower east-sider males of the late ‘90s caused a nearly-forgotten shoe brand to become a must-have, was equally important in the annals of tippiness. 

Is it just me or do other people find the codification of anecdote as scientific fact bothersome? I suspect that the popularity of this practice puts my sort in the minority. Gladwell is guilty of this sin of elision, as are the Heath brothers, as is every so-called business book I’ve ever attempted to read through. Some, like Good to Great, required reading at my previous job, attempt to hide the anecdotal reality of their evidence in a sea of statistical observation, failing to recognize the first lesson of statistics (at least for me), that a correlation is not a proof. More often, it is simply the diet-book effect—it worked for me and my friends, so it’s obviously a good diet—the proof is in the pudding. 

Perhaps it all boils down to The Power of Suggestion. And with this aphoristic beginning, I could write my own solution-to-all-ills business/diet/self-help book, but though a powerful temptation, I shall endeavor to resist. I will not write about connectors or disseminators or agents of stickiness. I will eschew type-A personalities and carbohydrate loading and all things karmic. I feel no urge to simplify what is necessarily a richly complicated world.

At the same time, I feel compelled to say more about tippiness and stickiness. The Heath brothers mention the tippy book as one of the inspirations for their sticky book. In fact, they pretty much re-branded the whole tippy idea as the sticky bible. Their book is an unabashed guide to making your business sticky, as if a few key thoughts could take any good idea and make it great. Essentially, they’ve homogenized the range of anecdote from Gladwell’s book, pasteurized the idea of the straw that broke the camel’s back, added an unhealthy dose of does and don’ts, and created a guide to ruining any spark of imagination or creative thought.

On the other hand, this is really want most people seem to want—a sort of pabulum for the narrow mind. I bridle and become peevish when forced to digest such revolting stuff. At least Gladwell is a good writer, and I probably could have finished the book if I hadn’t started with the Heath’s. Their book is a model of excess and repetition, and it’s not even very long. 

I wish that Gladwell had talked about the study of tipping points more and spent less time trying to define the sort of people who can cause tipping points. Perhaps this came up later in the book, but I didn’t have the patience to find out. However, I thought that this definition from Wikipedia was as interesting as anything I read in the book.

“In sociology, a tipping point or angle of repose is the event of a previously rare phenomenon becoming rapidly and dramatically more common. The phrase was coined in its sociological use by Morton Grodzins, by analogy with the fact in physics that when a small amount of weight is added to a balanced object, it can cause it to suddenly and completely topple.

“Grodzins studied integrating American neighborhoods in the early 1960s. He discovered that most of the white families would remain in the neighborhood so long as the comparative number of black families remained very small. But, at a certain point, when "one too many" black families arrived, the remaining white families would move out en masse in a process known as white flight. He called that moment the "tipping point." The idea was expanded and built upon by Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Schelling in 1972. A similar idea underlies Mark Granovetter's threshold model of collective behavior.”

I’ve moved on to Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Einstein. What a relief! It’s nice to be able to use words like brilliant and genius and have them applied appropriately. There’s no need for exaggeration and no attempt to say that you, too, can be an Einstein. It’s pretty much statement of fact, elegantly presented, written in a lucid, readable style, full of worthwhile detail, and entirely fascinating.